Music, like love, has the capacity for altering your consciousness, your brain chemistry. These two releases—River of Eden, from Yosef Gutman and Peter Broderick, and The Berklee Sessions, from Scanner and Neil Leonard, each of which got past me in 2024, have the capacity to do just that, and they do it in completely different fashions, acoustically and electronically, respectively.
The Santa Fe/Albuquerque-based quartet Love Unfold the Sun and the Boston-based band Club d’Elf share a number of characteristics. They both blend Middle Eastern/African and Western elements, and incorporate an exotic instrument. Texture plays an important role in the musical development of their material. Flow is prized over destination. Yet, even with these similarities, the two groups make music that is quite different.
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